RAID Storage Slice Backup Selection for Offline Disk Recovery
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional RAID-based storage systems face performance shortcomings in handling offline storage disks or slices, leading to inefficient backup and rebuild operations that impact user experience and system performance.
Innovation Solution
A storage management method that selects a backup storage slice from a different storage disk when a storage slice becomes offline, temporarily writes data to the backup slice, and replaces the offline slice with the backup slice if it remains offline, thereby reducing the need for full data rebuilding and minimizing bandwidth usage during recovery.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional RAID backup operation is performed when storage disk goes offline, then data redundancy is maintained, but system performance deteriorates due to extensive read and write operations required for full data rebuilding
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-selecting a backup storage slice before the storage disk goes offline. When the disk becomes offline, the system can immediately use the pre-selected backup slice to receive written data, avoiding the need to perform full data rebuilding operations and thus maintaining system performance while ensuring data redundancy.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts the backup storage slice selection process from the full data rebuilding operation. By separating the selection step from the rebuilding step, the system can maintain data redundancy through selective backup while avoiding the performance penalty of complete data reconstruction across all storage slices.
2Reliability
If full data rebuilding is performed during backup operation, then data integrity is ensured, but bandwidth consumption increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the necessary data redundancy function from the full data rebuilding process. By selecting a specific backup storage slice rather than performing complete rebuilding, the system ensures data integrity through redundancy while minimizing bandwidth consumption by avoiding unnecessary data transfer operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies partial action by performing only the minimum necessary backup operation - selecting and using a single backup storage slice - rather than performing excessive full data rebuilding. This partial action is sufficient to maintain data integrity while significantly reducing bandwidth consumption.
3Loss of time
If backup storage slice is selected immediately when storage disk goes offline, then response time is reduced, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-selecting the backup storage slice at the moment the storage disk goes offline, rather than delaying the selection. This immediate selection reduces response time while keeping system complexity manageable by using a straightforward selection criterion based on the offline event itself.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques for storage management involve: in response to a first disk becoming offline and remaining offline until a first time point, selecting a second storage slice in a second disk as a backup storage slice for a first storage slice in the first disk, the first storage slice being one of slices forming a redundant array of independent disks (RAID), the slices being located in different disks. The techniques further involve: writing, between the first time point and a second time point, data to be written into the first storage slice in the RAID to the second storage slice, the second time point being later than the first time point. The techniques further involve: in response to the first disk remaining offline until the second time point, replacing the first storage slice in the RAID with the second storage slice. Such techniques may improve performance of a RAID-based storage system.